The use of wheeled shopping carts within supermarkets and the like has long presented the problem of damage to store fixtures such as refrigerator and freezer cases. Such shopping carts are conventionally pushed against or slid along the faces of the store fixtures and, since the baskets are constructed from wire rod, this causes substantial damage to the store fixtures and makes them unsightly. To minimize such damage, many store fixtures have been provided with a rub strip extending longitudinally along the front face thereof, which strip was intended to engage the cart basket and maintain it spaced from the front face of the fixture. While such rub strips are themselves less than desirable and detract from the appearance of the store fixtures, nevertheless they have tended to minimize damage to the fixtures, particularly when the supermarket utilizes conventional shopping carts of the type having baskets which nest one within the other. Such baskets are normally provided with a rather low bottom wall and permit the rub strip to engage the front corners of the basket. Such rub strips, however, have not always solved the problem of damage to store fixtures, and such strips themselves can be damaging to carts due to the rubbing on the wires of the basket.
To improve upon this problem, most cart manufacturers offer an optional bumper which can be mounted on the front corner of the basket. This bumper comprises a small L-shaped plastic element which is positioned to horizontally wrap around the front corner of the cart, with the bumper having a horizontally elongated groove on the inner side thereof to effectively snap over one of the horizontal wires of the basket. Such bumpers have traditionally been of only small vertical extent, such as less than two inches, and in addition can be provided only where the basket has horizontally extending wires. Such bumpers have been of only minimal effectiveness in view of their size and positional limitations. For this reason, some users request that the carts be equipped with several such bumpers disposed vertically spaced along the front corners of the cart in an attempt to improve upon the protection afforded the store fixtures. This, however, results in the cart being rather unsightly. In addition, these small bumpers can often be readily removed or accidentally dislodged from the cart, and hence use of these small bumpers has been limited.
In an attempt to improve upon this problem, many years ago the assignee of this application developed and attempted to commercialize a vertically elongated bumper which would extend along the majority of the front corner of the basket. This prior bumper involved an elongated plastic bumper strip which had several horizontal slots formed in the inner surface thereof in vertically spaced relationship. These vertical-spaced slots were positioned to correspond to the positioning of the horizontal wires on the basket so that the bumper could be positioned over these wires adjacent the external front corner of the basket. The bumper strip also had integral protrusions which projected through the wall of the basket into the interior thereof, which protrusions defined a vertically elongated slot extending along the inner corner of the basket. An elongated plastic locking pin was then inserted downwardly in the interior of the basket through the slot defined by the protrusions to hence lock the bumper to the basket. In this arrangement, however, it was found that the pin could not be snugly fitted in the slot since the pin tended to work loose, and in addition the carts could be vandalized in that the pins could be removed so that the bumpers would hence become lost. Thus, it was necessary for the plastic pins to be fixed to the bumper strip, as by means of a solvent which effected a welding of the plastic pieces together. However, users of shopping carts did not commercially accept this bumper for several reasons. First, a different style of bumper had to be designed for each style cart inasmuch as the bumper required an interfitting relationship with the horizontal wires on the basket, and hence prevented the bumper from being universally fitted on most commercially available carts. Secondly, the necessity of having to use a solvent to secure the locking pin to the bumper was also undesirable since most bumpers are retrofitted on the carts in the field, and end users do not wish to undertake any project which involves the use of solvents and the like in order to permit such a retrofitting operation to be accomplished. For this reason, this prior type bumper was not accepted, and hence its commercialization and use was discontinued many years ago.
Nevertheless, the problem of damage to store fixtures as caused by the cart baskets has continued to be an ongoing and long-standing problem. The extent of this problem is evidenced by the fact that, in recent years, many supermarkets have utilized carts of the type referred to as "over-the-counter" carts. These latter carts have a much higher basket since the bottom of the basket is designed to be positioned over the checkout counter. These baskets, due to their height, have also created a substantial problem with respect to damaging store fixtures, and it has hence been conventional in the shopping cart industry to provide such carts with a plastic bumper at the lower front corners.
Of late, however, supermarkets are demanding carts having increased goods-carrying capacity in the basket, and thus many supermarkets are now switching from over-the-counter carts back to conventional carts of the type having baskets which nest one within the other, except that such carts are being provided with significantly larger baskets to provide substantially increased capacity. Further, these conventional carts are being provided with baskets of increased length to increase the capacity thereof, and hence the problem of damage to store fixtures is again a significant one since it has been observed that these carts often do not contact the rub strips on the fixtures due to such strips being improperly elevationally positioned. Further, when the front corners of the basket do contact the rub strips, these strips themselves have been observed to damage the basket. For example, where two side-by-side cabinets are joined together, the rub strips of the two cabinets normally have a small joining plate positioned at the joint or seam, which joining plate projects slightly forward from the rub strips inasmuch as it overlaps the adjacent ends thereof. When a cart is slidably moved along the rub strip, the vertical wires of the cart adjacent the front corner often engage this joining plate, which hence causes the front vertical wire to be severely stressed and effects a braking of the weld from the supporting horizontal wires.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide an improved bumper arrangement for a shopping cart basket which provides improved protection for both the basket and store fixtures, which bumper arrangement is believed to overcome or significantly minimize the problems associated with prior structures of this type, as explained above.
More specifically, it is an object of this invention to provide an improved bumper arrangement which can be mounted on the front corners of the cart basket to extend along a substantial majority of the vertical extent of each corner to optimize protection for both the basket and the store fixtures, which can be readily and universally mounted on substantially any conventional cart basket irrespective of the arrangement or positioning of the horizontal wires making up the cart basket, which can also be readily retrofitted in the field to most existing carts in a very simple manner requiring only minimal time and effort and without requiring any sophisticated tools or the like, which can be manufactured efficiently and economically, and which provides the cart with a desirable appearance when mounted on the cart basket.
In the improved cart and bumper arrangement of this invention, there is provided a vertically elongated plastic bumper strip which has a substantially L-shaped cross section so that the bumper will fit in a wrapped-around relationship along the front corner of the cart basket. The bumper strip has a length which enables it to extend over a substantial majority of the length of the front corner. The bumper strip has a pair of sidewardly and downwardly directed L-shaped securing hooks provided at the upper and lower ends thereof, which hooks project transversely inwardly a substantial extent beyond the inner surface of the bumper strip. The bumper strip is positioned to abut against several of the horizontally extending wires of the cart basket directly at the front corner thereof. The securing hooks project inwardly through the wall of the basket by an extent sufficient to overlap the horizontal wires. The bumper arrangement can, after positioning of the bumper against the front corner, be slidably moved downwardly so that the upper and lower hooks overlap and project downwardly past a pair of horizontal basket wires, following which the lower free end of the upper hook is suitably deformed into a position beneath the horizontal wires to fixedly secure the securing rod, and hence the bumper strip, to the cart basket.
With the improved bumper arrangement as described above, the bumper strip has a smooth internal surface which extends vertically thereof and abuts the horizontal wires of the basket, and the same bumper strip can thus be utilized on baskets having significantly different configurations without requiring the manufacturing and stocking of several different sizes of bumper arrangements. Further, once the bumper arrangement is mounted on the basket, it is securely retained and is not readily subject to vandalism. The resulting bumper strip provides protection along a majority of the vertical extent of the front corners of the basket, and hence provides effective protection for both the store fixtures and the basket.
Other objects and purposes of the invention will be apparent to persons familiar with shopping carts of this general type upon reading the following specification and inspecting the accompanying drawings.